TAFTA/TTIP: What Price Transparency?

from the one-law-for-the-rich,-one-law-for-the-poor dept

One of the key problems with TAFTA/TTIP is the same one that plagued ACTA and has recently been highlighted with TPP: the complete lack of any meaningful transparency. However much the negotiators may claim that transparency is important to them, there’s no evidence to support that view. Or perhaps the politicians think the existence of conferences like one being held in Brussels next January provide enough opportunities for anyone who wants to convey their views to the EU’s Chief Negotiator, say. He’ll be attending, along with several other senior European Commission officials, according to the program.

Unlike many overpriced conferences, the costs for this one seem quite reasonable: it charges less for NGOs and not-for-profit organizations than for corporate visitors, and will try to accommodate those who can’t afford even that:

We realise the importance of including all groups in the discussions at our events, and will always do our best to ensure that nobody is excluded due to not being able to afford the conference fee.

If you find the charge for tickets a barrier to attending, please let us know and we will endeavour to come to an arrangement to facilitate your participation. Please note however that this applies to individuals, unfunded academics/students and representatives of small charities, not businesses, individuals funded by an organisation, or larger charities/not-for-profit organisations.

That’s to be commended, because otherwise members of the public whose means are very limited are inevitably excluded from such important opportunities to make their views known to key political figures in the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations (although they still have the cost of getting to Brussels…) But there’s one area where money most certainly talks at this conference. The “Sponsorship Prospectus” (pdf) spells out some of things that can be bought. For example, for a mere €4000, you can be “Exclusive Host of VIP & Speaker Dinner” with the following benefits:

Opportunity to speak during dinner debate
Three-course dinner for speakers and high-level invited guests
Three seats at dinner reserved for your representatives or guests
Corporate identity displayed in dining area during dinner
Corporate identity included on menu cards
Full page advert in programme
3 complimentary delegate places

Then there are really major sponsorships that aren’t even up for grabs — things like becoming the conference’s “Platinum Sponsor”, which turns out to be the Business Software Alliance (BSA). I wonder what the BSA receives in exchange for that sponsorship: special access to some of the key people taking part, certainly, and probably the EU’s Chief Negotiator too. Given that the BSA was originally in favor of SOPA, we can guess what its representatives at this conference will be saying to him when they meet.

And that’s the real problem here. Those able to pay for sponsorship are granted a level of direct and concentrated access that the mere conference plebs — even if admitted free of charge thanks to the organizer’s laudable generosity — will never enjoy. That might not matter if there were plenty of other ways for the public to make their views known to the TAFTA/TTIP negotiators, but as we know, there aren’t any.

Which means that the vast disparity in influence that exists between the rich and powerful who already have an inside track to TAFTA/TTIP officials, and the hundreds of millions of people in whose name the negotiations are supposedly being held, will be made even greater by events such as the one taking place in Brussels next year. That’s not the fault of the conference organizers, of course, but it’s certainly is the fault of the US and EU politicians that mouth platitudes about TAFTA/TTIP’s transparency while failing to put into practice.

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Filed Under: access, negotiations, sponsorships, tafta, tpp, trade agreements, transparency, ttip
Companies: bsa

Hollywood Studio Bosses Ask Obama To Help Improve Relationship With Silicon Valley… While Pressing TPP That Will Harm Silicon Valley

from the yeah,-so-that-first-bit... dept

Just before Thanksgiving, it appears that President Obama got to spend some time with the heads of the various major film studios, during which they made two key requests:

1. Help them improve their relationship with the tech industry.
2. Push forward with the various maximalist copyright proposals found in the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement.

Apparently, these studio bosses don’t realize that point number two is a big part of the reason why they’re having trouble with point number one. Of course, the reality is they don’t want “better relationships” with Silicon Valley, they want Silicon Valley to do exactly what they want, which is to try to kill off or block innovations that challenge their legacy business models, even if they provide better services to artists and the public alike. Furthermore, pushing bogus concepts like the maximalist copyright rules that the US has been seeking in the TPP agreement — basically as a way to backdoor in much of their legal agenda — is hardly the way to get Silicon Valley to be more friendly with Hollywood. It’s just their way of trying to screw over the very industry that keeps providing them with the innovations that they need to adapt and to provide better services to consumers.

Filed Under: barack obama, copyright, hollywood, silicon valley, tpp

Without Anyone Paying Attention, Canada Is About To Change Its Laws To Support ACTA

from the sneaky,-sneaky dept

Thought ACTA was dead? While the EU Parliament may have strongly rejected it, and even with the EU Commission (who negotiated it) admitting that ACTA is dead, a variety of other countries still did sign on to the agreement. And, now, it appears that with basically no one paying any attention at all, Canada may be about to pass some laws to effectively tie itself to ACTA’s ridiculous requirements. The bill was originally introduced back in March, but was never considered by the Canadian Parliament. However, in late October, it was reintroduced under a new code, C-8, and it looks like it’s moving forward, despite almost no public discussion of it anywhere.

The whole point of ACTA, and this bill, are to unite two very different issues: counterfeiting and copyright infringement. The legacy copyright players have been trying to conflate these things for years. That’s because they can point to the tiny, but very real, problem of counterfeit drugs or safety equipment that can cause serious damage… and then mix it with the very “large” issue of copyright infringement (where they can’t show any actual damage or harm) and pretend that it’s a big problem which puts tons of people at risk. Of course, none of that is true. Counterfeiting may be an issue, but it’s a very small issue, and in the vast, vast majority of cases, with little to no threat of harm. But, the copyright legacy players have figured out that tying their bandwagon to the claim that “counterfeit drugs kill people” may help them to pass draconian copyright laws.

Bizarrely, the Canadian government appears to have bought this bogus argument, despite nearly all of the evidence suggesting it’s wrong. Michael Geist made exactly this point to the Canadian Parliament, but nearly everyone else they heard from were industry folks insisting that they needed this new “anti-counterfeiting” bill. And the end result is it appears that the Canadian Parliament is about to move forward on the bill without hearing from anyone other than Geist who might represent the interests of the public at large. As Howard Knopf notes:

What this exercise it will do – and has done – is to allow lobbyists with a maximalist agenda to use this fake problem of fakes to create the potential for interference with legitimate trade in parallel imports, vastly increased criminalization of everyday “infringement”, shifting of enforcement costs from the private sector to the taxpayer, and the interference with the transshipment of generic drugs and other legitimate products. The new law will allow incredible opportunity for abusive or even simply incompetent enforcement. This can be very costly to large and SME business, not to mention consumers. This is perhaps the most sweeping legislation in Canadian IP law in 70 years, and it is being done without adequate hearings, study or the demonstration of any need. Anyone looking for counterfeit products can find them on the street in mid-town and downtown Manhattan. One doesn’t find this kind of flagrant counterfeiting in Canada. The “evidence” of a major problem with counterfeit good that can’t already be dealt with via existing laws almost entirely anecdotal or absent. Piling on of responsibility to border officials is an unnecessary and costly mistake. The DNA and fingerprints of the movie and record industries are all over this bill.

Tragically, there appears to be almost no media coverage of this at all. Basically, it looks like Canadian politicians waited until everyone was looking elsewhere, and then tried to sneak ACTA right through the Parliament. This would be a major win for the movie and recording industries in the US, but a massive loss for Canadians and Canadian innovation.

Filed Under: acta, c-8, canada, copyright, counterfeiting

Lobbyist Insists His Meeting About 'TPP IP Issues' Wasn't About TPP IP Issues

from the pants-on-fire dept

We recently wrote about the ridiculous revolving door between the USTR and various copyright and patent maximalist lobbying organizations. If you want to know why the USTR always is pushing for maximalist positions, that’s a good place to start. Our post was commenting on an article by Tim Lee at the Washington Post, in which he highlighted numerous examples of the revolving door between maximalist lobbying groups and the USTR. One of his very first examples was former top USTR official Ralph Ives, who signed a big deal, and then quickly went to work for a lobbying group that represents medical device manufacturers. Here’s what Lee wrote:

The lead American negotiator was Ralph Ives, who was promoted to Assistant USTR for Pharmaceutical Policy soon after the negotiations concluded. He was aided by Claude Burcky, Deputy Assistant USTR for Intellectual Property. Less than three months after the Australia agreement was signed, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that both men would take jobs at pharmaceutical or medical device companies. Their new employers stood to benefit from some of the pro-patent-holder provisions of the treaty. Ives took a job at AdvaMed, a trade group representing medical device manufacturers. Burcky moved to the pharmaceutical and medical device company Abbott Labs.

Later in the piece, Lee quoted Advamed angrily denying that Ives was lobbying USTR on intellectual property issues:

But AdvaMed disputes an accusation from Love that it has been lobbying USTR on patent issues. “Neither AdvaMed nor Ives has ever provided USTR comments on a provision of the TPP IP chapter,” an AdvaMed spokeswoman stated by email.

Okay. That was on November 26th at 2:22pm ET. Less than four hours later, Jamie Love over at KEI released a bunch of FOIA’d documents, showing 127 pages of emails between various industry lobbyists and the USTR concerning intellectual property issues on the TPP agreement. Tim Lee noted that not only do those emails show a very cozy relationship between IP lobbyists and the USTR, they show very clearly that Ives was, in fact, lobbying on IP issues. Here, for example, is an email showing a meeting that is scheduled involving the USTR and various “cleared advisors” including Ives, and the subject matter is listed as “TPP IP issues.”

Elsewhere in the documents, they show Ives asking for a meeting to “debrief” with Jared Ragland, the Director of the Office of Intellectual Property and Innovation at the USTR. Ives makes his request at 4:51pm on a Tuesday. Ragland has confirmed the meeting by 3:12am Wednesday morning. Ives reached out to Ragland another time elsewhere in the emails. Two other times in the emails, Ragland is seen emailing Ives directly asking for some advice.

But, no, Advamed insists, they never ever talked about intellectual property issues.

Lee asked Advamed to explain and they insist that Ives and Ragland talked about transparency issues, not IP. And that meeting that was supposedly all about “TPP IP Issues”? Advamed insists that the guy who sent that email, Medtronic lobbyist Trevor Gunn, simply misspoke, because he has a habit of calling anything an IP issue:

On Wednesday, an AdvaMed spokeswoman told me that the intellectual property chapter of the TPP was not discussed at any of these meetings. She noted that “Ragland was the lead negotiator for the transparency issues and procedural fairness provision of the TPP.” She says that those issues, not IP issues, were the focus of Ives’s conversations with Ragland.

As for the “TPP IP issues” e-mail, AdvaMed says that Gunn is simply in the habit of using “TPP IP issues” as a shorthand for all of the issues that he works on, which also includes non-IP issues of interest to medical device companies. The AdvaMed spokeswoman, after consulting with Ives, said that despite the meeting’s title, intellectual property issues did not come up during that Feb. 1 conference call.

Let’s take a show of hands. How many people actually believe that the former lead negotiator for the USTR on an important intellectual property section of a bilateral trade agreement, who quickly moved to a big medical device lobbying firm, who was clearly in regular contact with the “director of the office of intellectual property” and who was also in a meeting with top USTR officials whose only listed topic was “TPP IP Issues” did not actually talk to USTR officials about IP? We’ll wait.

Of course, this is just part of the problem with the total lack of transparency from the USTR. The whole thing is set up to favor these kinds of back room deals, in which “friends” of the USTR (including former USTR officials), now working for maximalist organizations who are hellbent on keeping out competitive innovations, strongly influence the procedures. Elsewhere in the emails, you see a very close relationship with top RIAA official, Neil Turkewitz, who passes along news items to USTR officials (including about the original leak of the March 2011 TPP IP chapter — the last one that we had seen prior to the recently leaked August version). He also reaches out to set up a meeting for RIAA boss Cary Sherman to express his concerns about the USTR including “limitations and exceptions” to copyright in the TPP. This was big news at the time because the USTR has never included such things (rather than “limitations and exceptions” they should be called “rights of the public”) in a trade agreement. Of course, he shouldn’t have worried. Later revelations showed that the USTR put in a system to limit fair use, not spread it.

Either way, you see a very cozy relationship between the USTR and maximalist lobbyists. Lee also asked Peter Maybarduk, who’s been focused on pharmaceutical issues for Public Citizen and has been heavily active in TPP issues, if the USTR ever emailed him the way they email lobbyists, and the answer, of course, was not at all:

Peter Maybarduk, who works on pharmaceutical issues at the advocacy group Public Citizen, says that he never gets e-mails like that from USTR. “We don’t get any request for our take on this or that. If we ask to meet with Probir [Mehta of the USTR’s Office of Intellectual Property and Innovation] for example, he’ll meet with us. We’ll have a conversation. Those conversations have gotten better over time. But it’s a complex diplomatic exercise, it’s not like a frank exchange of information about what is actually happening.”

Reading the emails between lobbyists and the USTR suggests a much chummier relationship… and that’s clearly reflected in the dangerous proposals the USTR is pushing. They favor those few companies, but harm competition, innovation and the public. Protecting a few powerful legacy players at the expense of everyone else is the worst of crony capitalism. Just the very fact that it appears the lobbyists themselves are pretending that they’re not discussing IP issues with the USTR shows pretty clearly that even those lobbyists know what’s going on is a disgusting abuse of crony capitalism to advance their own personal interests over those of the American public or economy. Shameful.

Filed Under: copyright, jared ragland, lobbying, patents, ralph ives, revolving door, tpp, tpp ip chapter, ustr
Companies: advamed

TPP Defenders Take To The Internet To Deliver Official Talking Points; Inadvertently Confirm Opponents' Worst Fears

from the TPP-doesn't-do-anything-opponents-claim-it-does,-except-for-all-this dept

The leaked TPP draft, pried loose from the “open and transparent” grip of the USTR, is generating plenty of commentary all over the web. After getting a good look inside, it’s little wonder the USTR felt more comfortable trying to push this through under the cover of darkness.

As the criticism of the push for IP maximalism mounts, the treaty’s defenders have leapt into the fray, hoping to assure everyone who wasn’t previously aware of the treaty’s contents (which is pretty much everyone) that there’s nothing to see here and please move along.

Mike recently broke down the ridiculous claims and posturing of the USTR’s “talking points.” Amanda Wilson Denton, counsel to the IIPA (International Intellectual Property Alliance) has showed up right on cue to “set the record straight” on the leaked TPP draft. Let’s see how well she followed the talking points. (Talking points in bold.)

The Draft Is Already Outdated

The only thing that can certainly be said about this draft is that it does not reflect the current state of the negotiations…

If it is what it purports to be, the draft reveals a snapshot in time of the ongoing work of the participating countries to hammer out an agreement in Intellectual Property Rights…

Sure, it’s only a “snapshot.” But unless everything’s changed since then, it’s a very representative snapshot of the involved countries’ stances on IP issues. Just because the work is “ongoing” doesn’t mean its improving.

What It Would Not Require: Changes to U.S. IP Law

While it is impossible to say right now what a TPP IP chapter would do, experience provides an answer for what it would not do — since the U.S. began negotiating FTAs again in 2000, no FTA has required a change to U.S. intellectual property law.

The U.S. proposals mirror the current duration of copyright in U.S. law. They track the provisions already agreed in previous FTAs regarding the technologies that rights holders use to control access to their works and limitations on liability to benefit ISPs, including the FTA agreed between the United States and Korea that entered into force in 2012…

In sum, the putative U.S. positions revealed in the leaked text would be consistent with U.S. law and prior free trade agreements approved by Congress, and most importantly would help to achieve better copyright protection among our trading partners…

While we understand that there are parties that don’t like present U.S. law and policy, this leaked text demonstrates a fealty to existing U.S. law, and not an abandonment thereof.

So, if you love current US IP law (and wish it would be expanded), you’ll love the TPP. If you don’t, well… get used to it. The US is running your IP show now, foreigners.

Denton does admit there is one change to existing US law, something only a maximalist would be happy to see — a provision that would allow rights holders to pursue criminal charges against those who “aid and abet” copyright infringement. Great news! That means you no longer have to actually infringe to be held criminally accountable. All you have to do is be adjacent to it.

The Only Real “News” – Many Bogus Claims Are Now Verifiably False.

The only real “news” in the leaked text is that various claims (e.g., TPP endangers Internet freedom, TPP is SOPA) are now provably false.

[T]he issue that generated controversy surrounding SOPA—website blocking through DNS blocking—is entirely absent from the text as recently noted by Ambassador Froman. Froman specifically raised the issue of “blocking rogue Internet sites from accessing the Internet from the United States” in a recent interview published in the November 18, 2013 issue of Washington Trade Daily. He stated unequivocally: “There is nothing in the Trans Pacific Partnership, zero, that has anything to do with that…”

Any comparison to SOPA/PIPA is completely inappropriate and inaccurate.

Comparisons to SOPA are valid because the leaks show the US is pushing a maximalist hard line, one that goes much further than most other countries are willing to go (Australia being the notable exception).

SOPA was a maximalist’s dream. Since a majority of Americans are not maximalists, the bill was tough to sell. The USTR knows this, which is why every aspect of these negotiations has been as secretive as possible. Simply stating the TPP is not SOPA because it isn’t exactly the same is a weak dodge. It has the same intent. The TPP will harm internet freedom the same way SOPA would have. Secondary liability will now be a criminal act, as Denton points out in her defense of the agreement.

And as for Ambassador Froman’s claim that the TPP doesn’t provide for the blocking of “rogue sites,” former USTR employee and current analyst for the ITIF (SOPA’s “intellectual backer”) Michelle Wein actually points out that it does in her op-ed defending the proposal.

In addition, the text does not require ISPs to block access, but instead asks that they take reasonable steps: “Court-ordered relief to compel or restrain certain actions shall be limited to terminating specified accounts, or to taking reasonable steps to block access to a specific, non-domestic online location. [emphasis added]” Essentially, this means that courts cannot make ISPs financially liable for copyright infringement by their users, but can ask them to take steps to block access.

When the government starts “asking” ISPs to “take reasonable steps” (what does that even mean?) to block sites, it’s not a request. It’s a very forceful suggestion with potential legal implications, as most court ORDERS are. ISPs may not be liable for customers’ infringement, but they can certainly be held liable for not “taking reasonable steps” to block access. “Reasonable” is in the eye of the beholder, and what that means for ISPs is that courts will be making this call after they’ve already issued an order “asking” them to block sites.

What’s being witnessed here is the US attempting to make the world beholden to its rights holders. The TPP makes a mockery the last word in its title. There’s no “partnership” here. Just a country misusing its stature and economic power to rewrite international IP laws in servitude of a few select industries.

Filed Under: copyright, defenders, patents, talking points, tpp
Companies: iipa

Resistance Grows To Inclusion Of Corporate Sovereignty In Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA)

from the just-get-rid-of-it dept

Remember CETA, the Canada-EU trade agreement, officially known as “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement”? You could be forgiven for losing track of where things were with the negotiations, which have been dragging on since 2009, but a kind of milestone was passed recently:

Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have today reached a political agreement on the key elements of a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) after months of intense negotiations between EU Trade Commissioner De Gucht and Canadian trade Minister Ed Fast. It will be the first free trade agreement between the European Union and a G8 country.

Despite that “political agreement”, there still remains plenty to be done, as this CBC article explains:

Some areas of the agreement still need drafting, while others need fine-tuning, reporters learned through a briefing. But the most contentious points have been settled. The agreement text then has to be drafted, run past lawyers and translated into 24 languages for the 28 EU countries to examine.

The document Harper and Barroso signed Friday is an agreement in principle and full ratification is likely two years away.

Although the CBC post claims “the most contentious points have been settled”, that’s not true for one of the most controversial areas: corporate sovereignty, officially known as investor-state dispute settlement — and resistance is building. For example, the European Trade Union Confederation, which claims to represent more than 60 million workers in Europe, “strongly opposes the inclusion of ISDS in CETA.” And as negotiations on the ISDS chapter begin, over 80 organizations have put together a “transatlantic statement” calling for the corporate sovereignty chapter to be withdrawn from CETA completely:

As European and Canadian trade officials meet again in Brussels today to continue negotiating an investment protection chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), transatlantic civil society groups are demanding that this chapter be removed entirely as an affront to democracy, an attack on the independent judiciary, and a threat to climate change and our shared environment.

The CETA “will include a controversial and unnecessary investment protection chapter and investor-to-state dispute settlement process (ISDS) that a growing number of countries are rejecting for good reasons,” says the transatlantic statement, which is endorsed by more than 80 organizations in the European Union, Canada and Quebec. “These excessive corporate protections, built into thousands of investment treaties and free trade agreements, serve no social or economic purpose other than to undermine our democratic rights to decide public policy and public interest regulation.”

The accompanying statement (pdf) provides a useful summary of why the inclusion of corporate sovereignty in so-called trade agreements is so worrying. Here are some of the main points:

CETA will permanently freeze existing rules governing investment and then strictly limit government regulation of services, investment, natural resources, environmental protection and public safety measures in the interests of corporations. All existing government policies in all these areas that have not been excluded from the agreement up front will be covered, making it difficult for countries to introduce new services or regulations in the future that affect however modestly the investment opportunities of foreign companies and investors.

In fact, changes to regulations are still possible, but the ISDS chapter means in practice that they will always be in favor of corporations, not the public. That’s because the intentional asymmetry of corporate sovereignty allows companies to sue a government for unlimited sums when they don’t like changes in regulations, but the public has no equivalent rights. This naturally encourages governments to listen to corporations and ignore its citizens.

There is no comfort in claims by the Commission or Canadian government that “frivolous” claims, or challenges to environmental policy, will be filtered out. Despite efforts in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to limit what kinds of government decisions might violate an investor’s minimum standards of treatment or other investment chapter protections, Canada continues to face investor-state disputes attacking environmental measures that affect national and foreign investors in exactly the same way (e.g. a partial moratorium on shale gas extraction in Quebec).

The declaration has a good explanation why this happens:

Likewise, we are not satisfied by efforts to limit the meaning of “indirect expropriation” so that legitimate public welfare objectives should be immune from investor challenges. The final determination is always made by the private investment tribunals themselves, and these unaccountable tribunals have a built-in bias toward the interests of multinational corporations.

Techdirt readers may recall that it was precisely this concept of indirect “expropriation” that Eli Lilly invoked when suing Canada under NAFTA’s ISDS section. As the declaration rightly notes, the lawyers who make up ISDS tribunals are inherently biased in favor of corporations because they can represent the same companies in other corporate sovereignty cases — an extraordinary conflict of interest.

Finally, the declaration points out why it is really important to remove the ISDS chapter from CETA before the final ratification:

Whatever the EU gets away with in CETA, including on investment protection, will just create a new ground floor on which multinational corporations will build even more.

The way all these agreements work is that they seek to take the results of previous treaties as a baseline, and then go beyond them — but always in favor of big business, never to the benefit of the public. That means one of the best ways of fighting corporate sovereignty in TAFTA/TTIP is to make sure it’s taken out of CETA.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: canada, ceta, corporate sovereignty, eu, investor-state dispute settlement, isds, trade agreements

US TPP Negotiators Accused Of Bullying; Refusing To Budge On Ridiculous IP And Corporate Sovereignty Demands

from the i'm-sorry-for-my-country's-insane-negotiators dept

This is hardly a surprise, but more reports are coming out revealing that the US’s ongoing strategy in negotiating the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) agreement is to not take into account the many, many concerns about the US’s hardline, maximalist position on both intellectual property issues and efforts to give corporations sovereignty over national laws under the misleadingly named (and purposely boring) “investor state dispute settlements” (ISDS). You would think that with widespread dissection and concerns expressed about the leaked intellectual property chapter, that the USTR might possibly ease up on its crazy maximalist demands. Not so — but that’s to be expected when you have Stan McCoy as the lead negotiator on intellectual property issues. McCoy is a famed extreme maximalist on IP issues who has more or less admitted to having no interest at all in hearing from public interest groups, while lapping up any opportunity to parrot bogus claims from the industry. McCoy was the same guy behind the embarassing disaster known as ACTA, which flopped so miserably. You’d think he’d take a hint, but instead it appears he’s decided to dig in his heels and make sure the US continues to live up to its reputation as an obnoxious bully.

Multiple reports have called out the US (and McCoy in particular) for its aggression and “bullying” in the negotiations. Others have accused the US of engaging in a “negotiation by exhaustion,” in which US negotiators seem to figure if they just stand their ground forever, everyone will eventually be bullied into agreeing to the US’s positions.

‘The US has adopted a strategy of exhaustion in its bullying of negotiators on the crucial intellectual property chapter to force countries to trade away health in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations in Salt Lake City’, according to Professor Jane Kelsey from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who is monitoring the negotiations.

‘The US has stepped up its aggression as they move towards their “end point” of the TPPA ministerial meeting in Singapore from 7 to 10 December’, said Professor Kelsey.

[….] ‘This is a loaded game’, Professor Kelsey said. ‘McCoy sets the agenda and timetable. Negotiators are working from morning until late at night and preparing to work all night, if necessary.’

The second link above, from a publication in Australia, notes something similar and complains about the Australian government’s seeming willingness to side with the US on these issues:

The United States has been accused of negotiation by exhaustion in last-minute talks in Salt Lake City ahead of the final ministers’ meeting that will decide the makeup of the Trans Pacific trade deal between Australia and eleven other nations.

Information leaking from the closed official-level talks suggests the United States is giving no ground on questions of intellectual property and medicines and is insisting each nation sign up to so-called Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions that would allow global corporations to sue sovereign governments.

[….] “What is happening is not a negotiation,” said Patricia Ranald, Convenor of the Australian Fair Trade Network. “The United States is dictating the terms and it seems the Australian Government is not prepared to join other governments which are resisting these demands

While Stan McCoy plays out his own last stand game, pushing for policies that may help a few of his friends in the industry at the expense of the public, hopefully that last point — about other governments resisting McCoy’s attempt to bully them into a really bad deal — stays true. An analysis of the positions on the IP Chapter, done by Gabriel Michael, highlighted how the US’s position is a lot more isolated than it might like. That may explain the bullying behavior. It looks like the USTR is getting desperate, realizing its usual tricks and games aren’t fooling most of the other negotiators. As Michael’s analysis showed, the US and Japan (two of the strongest supporters of maximalism) appear to be fairly isolated — issuing a lot more proposals that no one else supports.

Of course, the USTR is somewhat famous for its ability to start horse trading, promising bogus sweetheart deals if people just agree to awful language that will do massive harm to the public, so it’s still something to be quite nervous about until any final text is revealed. Of course, just the fact that the USTR has still refused to reveal the text itself should be reason enough to recognize that this deal is a joke designed to screw over the public. Those acting in the interest of the public don’t hide their efforts from the public.

Filed Under: bullies, copyright, corporate sovereignty, intellectual property, isds, negotiations, public interest, stan mccoy, tpp, ustr

NSA Complained It Wasn't Able To Spy Enough; Sought To Broaden Its Power

from the no,-seriously dept

Late on Friday, the NY Times reported on more from the Ed Snowden documents, highlighting how the NSA was whining internally that it didn’t have enough power, and outlining how it planned to get even more. Because, apparently, spying on nearly everyone just wasn’t enough. No, the NSA was fairly explicit in wanting to get rid of the “nearly” qualifier in that last sentence. Its goal was to be able to spy on “anyone, anytime, anywhere” and it didn’t want anything like pesky little “laws” or “civil liberties” to get in the way of that goal.

Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded.

Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to “revolutionize” analysis of its vast collections of data to “radically increase operational impact.”

Once again, we see that the claims from the NSA that it’s concerned about “protecting” people from “cybersecurity” issues are completely bogus. The goal is and has always been to weaken cybersecurity wherever possible. There’s much more in the article about the NSA’s plans and capabilities, but those two paragraphs above seem to make the key points: the NSA has a ton of power and is constantly scheming to get more, even if laws are currently blocking that ability. Furthermore, it wants to make us all less safe in its efforts to reach that goal.

Filed Under: nsa, power, surveillance

TPP IP Chapter Available For Discussion And Annotation At RapGenius

from the get-busy dept

If we had a truly transparent USTR (hahah, I know, stop laughing), it might have done something like what CCIA’s Matt Schruers just did: posting the latest known version of the IP Chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement to the annotation site RapGenius to allow for annotation and discussion over the document. Schruers notes, correctly, that the claims that TPP is “SOPA 2.0” are greatly exaggerated, but that there are still plenty of significant reasons to be quite concerned about the TPP — and that’s why there should be a real discussion about the actual text — something the USTR has steadfastly avoided for years.

U.S. experts may have concerns about the extent to which TPP accurately reflects U.S. law, and — assuming it does — whether locking in some provisions (and not others) via agreement is sound policy. Similarly, experts from other TPP countries may question whether adopting various provisions of U.S. law is desirable in their national legal system. Several already have. This is a question more complex than “is this SOPA 2?”, however, and it requires careful study of various provisions.

To that end, we want to enable experts and interested parties to edit/mark up the leaked TPP text, which is where Rap Genius comes in. Rap Genius is very effective for this purpose: it enables user-friendly, HTML-enabled crowd-sourced annotation to anyone online. Users may add their own annotations, comment on mine, or add suggestions to improve the text.

Of course, it should also be noted that some ridiculously believe that RapGenius itself is a “pirate” site. And, some others might point out that RapGenius itself is a bit of a closed system, whereas it might be nicer to use an open annotation system like Hypothes.is (though that organization has indicated it may do something similar). But, given the fact that RapGenius works now and is fairly easy to use, it seems like a good choice for today’s situation. And, indeed, as you go through the annotations already up on the site, there’s plenty of insightful content, looking at the various proposals and provisions in this leaked copy of the document, allowing for a real discussion about what’s being negotiated, rather than blanket platitudes that the USTR and its defenders have been pushing out about the agreement.

The really sad thing, of course, is that the USTR would never think to do something like this itself. Indeed, it would argue heavily against such a move, highlighting the simple fact that the USTR has, and continues to be, totally against transparency in what it’s doing with the TPP and other trade agreements.

Filed Under: annotation, discussion, tpp, transparency, ustr
Companies: rapgenius

Bloomberg Points Out That White House's Near Total Lack Of Transparency May Doom TPP

from the indeed-it-will dept

While the NY Times apparently has no problem endorsing the TPP agreement despite not having read it (because it’s still totally secret), it appears that other news organizations are feeling differently. Bloomberg’s editorial folks have written a pretty strong editorial slamming the Obama administration for the unnecessary and counterproductive secrecy around the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. And this isn’t from people who are against the overall agreement. To the contrary, they argue that a good free trade agreement between pacific rim countries would be very helpful for economic and job growth. But the near total lack of transparency by the US may doom the entire project.

The Bloomberg editorial notes that, contrary to USTR Michael Froman’s laughable claims of transparency, last week’s leak of the IP chapter showed how little transparency there had been, since the US was asking for lots of very controversial things, without any willingness to discuss this with the public. As they note, just because items are controversial, it doesn’t mean that the federal government should hide them from both Congress and the public — in fact, quite the opposite.

The administration may cite the controversies such provisions would provoke as a reason for keeping them secret. Yet just because a deal creates tension among competing interests isn’t a license to keep them uninformed. And the U.S. has invited more than 500 corporate advisers to help it negotiate a deal.

Corporations and trade groups, however, don’t represent the broader interests of consumers, workers, environmentalists and … oh, yes, taxpayers. Theoretically at least, representing them is Congress’s rightful role. Keeping it in the dark feeds the perception that the TPP is a special-interest free-for-all.

Basically, the argument here is similar to what I said last week: there wouldn’t be this kind of controversy if the USTR had sucked it up and actually been transparent. That means discussing publicly what they’re negotiating in our name, releasing draft texts of what they’re proposing, and then being open for discussion about it all. The USTR points to that last one — the fact that they’ll “talk to anyone” as evidence of transparency. But without the first two things, that last one isn’t transparency at all.

While Bloomberg has its own credibility problems these days, I’m somewhat surprised that it has come out so strongly against the way the administration and the USTR in particular, has handled the TPP negotiations. Many large media organizations, and especially a corporate appeasing one like Bloomberg, were mostly expected to do what the NYT did — repeat the topline claims about what the TPP is supposed to accomplish, and assume that the details don’t matter.

The details do matter quite a lot, and the USTR still doesn’t think we should be able to see them.

Filed Under: congress, michael froman, secrecy, tpp, transparency, ustr, white house